


Vortex

by eretria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eretria/pseuds/eretria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Five years and you still haven't figured out that you don't mix drugs, you idiot?" </i><br/>For the prompt: "Dean/future!Cas -- Dean wakes up in Castiel's bed, with Cas clinging to him like a lifeline."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vortex

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2010 for a comment meme. This was supposed to be fluff - but kind of took a sharp left turn before it reached that goal. Polished and beta-read by murron and auburn. Thank you!

Dean wakes to the bite of hands into his upper arms, to legs clamping around him, to the smell of sour sweat and anise and gusts of fast, panting breath against the side of his neck.

The initial disorientation brings a surge of panic, kicks off his ingrained fight-reflex. Dean twists, pushes, untangles himself forcefully with fists and knees even before he opens his eyes.

A muffled sound of pain and the hands and legs are gone. Dean’s heart beats a mile a minute, painful against his ribcage and he is out of the bed in the blink of an eye, smashing into something just in front of the bed. He curses under his breath as pain shoots up his shin.

His attacker isn't following him, so he takes the time to fight the unnerving feeling of disorientation. Woken so rudely from what must have been an atypically deep sleep, his mind is still sluggish. Dean is slow to recognise his surroundings in the near darkness, so he reaches out behind him. Wooden walls, rough. A smell of incense in the air and the sound of beads, rustling hard and cold in the sharp gusts of wind that blow into the room. Outside, thunder is rolling and rain is lashing down, beating against the window hard enough to rattle it in its hinges.

It comes back to him then, the memory of where he is and how he ended up in this room.

Tornado, right, not safe to drive. He remembers his other self whipping a empty beer bottle against a wall only inches from Dean's head in reaction to the news of the storm crackling from the radio. No use. His older self was determined, but not stupid.

Dean remembers Cas telling him he was welcome to crash at his place. Since his future self had seemed intent on setting things right with Risa, Dean had accepted. The other option had been bunking with Chuck, which... No, just no.

He remembers Cas' radiant, blindingly bitter smile and his other self's derisive lip curl when Cas had told Dean he didn't need the bed. It's all so screwed up, them, this. Stretching out on Cas' bed, awkwardly close to the edge because it felt wrong, he'd closed his eyes. Unbidden, images had flashed in front of his mind's eye. Destroyed cities and inhuman humans, Cas rolling around in this bed with four women. Just last week, the idea would have been amusing, even titillating. Last night, the wrongness of it had made him nauseous.

It still does.

His heart slows down and his mind clears. Lightning illuminates the room and he gets a glimpse of the figure on the bed — a guy, scrawny, in baggy clothes.

It takes two more lightning strikes for Dean to realise that the guy is Cas. Cas, who is curled in on himself with his eyes open, staring into the darkness. Shivers wrack his body.

"Cas?"

Lightning reflects in Cas' eyes, making them impossibly blue. Thunder cracks; the boom of it shakes the hut. Cas curls tighter in on himself, knees coming up to his chin, arms around them. He shudders so hard the bed creaks.

Dean inches closer but stops when his knees hit the mattress. "What happened?"

The room is plunged into darkness again, and Dean barely hears Cas over the sound of the rain lashing against the window. He thinks he hears absinthe and mushrooms and remembers Cas saying he wouldn't need the bed because he'd made other arrangements. Dean wants to reach out and shake the stupid bastard. "Five years and you still haven't figured out that you don't mix drugs, you idiot?"

Lightning throws Cas' face into sharp relief, showing sweaty, matted hair and blue irises that are being swallowed by the blackness of the pupils. Cas' lips move. Dean hears just needed and I'm falling again and please, it's eating me alive and just need something to hold on to and he cannot, cannot, stop what he does next. Can't even think about why these fragmented pleas twist his heart into something painful and compressed.

He climbs back on the bed, pulls Cas toward him and wraps his arms, his legs, his entire body around Cas' shivering form, just holding on until Cas finally goes limp against Dean, melting into the touch. Melting and then clinging again, like he did before when he woke Dean up, his fingers digging painfully in Dean's upper arms once more. Dean doesn't know how long it'll take until Cas rides out the trip. He knows he'll have bruises all over his arms tomorrow, but he doesn't care. Can't care because in this whole fucked up version of the future, with all its fucked up people, Cas is the one whose change hits Dean the hardest. Being there for him now feels like an apology without words. An attempt to mend something his other self had broken.

Dean runs his hand through Cas sweat-matted hair, smells anise on Cas' breath and the sour stink of fear and pulls Cas closer still. He feels Cas' heart beat first frantically, then more slowly against his own. Cas still flinches whenever thunder rumbles outside and Dean wants to hurt his future self for letting Cas slip this far. For not preventing any of this. For letting Cas fall so far.

Dean holds onto Cas until he stops shivering while Cas tunnels his hands underneath Dean's shirt and rests them against Dean's back. He thinks Cas is trying to breathe him in.

Dean doesn't know which version of him Cas is imagining.

He presses his face into the crook of Cas' bony shoulder and pretends it's him. Pretends that he has made a difference when Cas' breath evens out into sleep.

The morning creeps in too early. Dean finds that he's reluctant to let go.


End file.
